Sim family improves medical care in Durham

Oshawa This Week

A new generation of doctors are honing their skills to help others right here in Durham Region.

Doctors, nurse and health care staff are learning side by side at Lakeridge Health Oshawa’s new LHEARN (Lakeridge Health Education and Research Network) centre, a $7 million, 25-square-foot facility that features state-of-the-art tools and resources, led by expert instructors.

Though it has been in operation for some time, its opening by Lakeridge Health officials last week made it official.

At the LHEARN Centre, health care professionals are challenged in life-like, real-time simulations of the sort they might encounter in hospital wards, ERs or surgical suites.

In one lab, students can test their skills at effectively delivering anesthesia to block a nerve; another sees a respiratory therapist teaching a tricky technique; while in a third lab, students can watch a ‘birth’ in labour and delivery room simulation.

It’s all extremely practical and conducted in real-time, the type of learning done as much with one’s hands as one’s mind.

An auditorium with capacity for more than 200 helps reinforce the hands-on learning with lectures, video-conferencing capability and a health sciences library for additional reference and study.

But the things that really set the LHEARN experience apart from similar centres are the highly realistic patient ‘sims’ that breathe, talk and blink. They are programmed to “experience” the sort of medical emergencies that health care providers regularly confront. Manufactured by a Norwegian company, the ‘sims’ included at the LHEARN Centre are SimMan, SimMom, SimNewB (with realistic newborn traits) and SimJunior, essentially a family that can represent just about any medical need or emergency diagnosis.

Dr. Randy Wax is the medical director of academic affairs for Lakeridge Health and proudly asserts there is nothing like the LHEARN Centre in any community hospital in Canada.

And if there is any lingering question about the centre’s impact on learning, Stephanie Slemko, a medical simulation specialist at LHEARN, relates the story of a resident who had practised responding to an anti-depressant overdose in one of the labs only to be confronted with exactly the same scenario -- in real life -- only a week later. The resident credited the successful outcome in that case (the patient recovered) with the extremely timely LHEARN simulation.

“She felt the teaching ... enabled her to make the right decisions and choices,” recalled Ms. Slemko.